


Regina

by audreyslove



Series: Family [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13547430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyslove/pseuds/audreyslove
Summary: Regina finds out her daughter has magic.





	Regina

It seems fitting to Regina that the one child that she was actually biologically related to would look nothing like her. It had been years since Roland began to call her "momma", with a tentative look at his father, who nodded with approval. The few times they venture outside of Storybrooke, people assume she is his biological mother all-too-easily. Roland looks a great deal like her, purely by coincidence. Henry, well, he at least shares a similar complexion, dark eyes and hair, with light skin.

  
But Eliza takes after her papa. She had her father's complexion, her father's blue eyes, and her hair….was mostly dirty blonde, with beautiful hints of red in it. Regardless of color, though, it is clearly "Mills" hair, and reminds Regina of her own hair, not in color but in its texture. Eliza has strong, thick, curled hair that frame her face perfectly, hair that had required careful braiding when she was younger, for it was so thick it easily became knotted and tangled up in anything. Eliza had been a messy child, after all. Those hiking trips with daddy always had her coming back with sticks and leaves and dirt sticking out of her hair, even with the tight braids Regina insisted on giving her. Without them, her curls would wind up a tangled mess in whatever tree sap or mud she'd somehow lather herself in during her time in the forest, and Regina would spend much of the night gently detangling her hair, occasionally needing olive oil to rub in to remove some of the items that would stick to her daughter's beautiful locks.

  
Eliza is older, now, and it has been a few years since she needed her mother to remove half the forest from her hair. She is more careful now, and less likely to get dirty. She is becoming a teenager.

  
But she's still Regina's baby.  So when she called her just now, and asks that Regina come home as soon as she could, Regina's heart leaps into her throat.  Eliza is sniffling, crying Regina thinks, and sounds scared. Before she can even think, Regina hurriedly poofs herself home, finding Eliza sitting at the kitchen table, hands on either side of her forehead, tears in her eyes.

  
"Eliza?" Regina calls out tentatively, "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

  
Eliza is holding a glass half filled with water. She continues to stroke the glass, nervously, but does not respond for quite some time. So Regina tries again.

  
"Eliza, whatever has happened you can tell me."

  
Eliza nods. "I'll….I think I should show you."

She places the glass on the other end of the table and sits back down. She takes a big breath in, and Regina tastes it on the air, the subtle sweetness of autumn leaves.  She knows what it is, what's in the air, even before it happens. Eliza focuses and then that’s it; the glass moves. Right into her hands.

And then the sobbing starts.

"You have magic," Regina says, stating the obvious, completely unsurprised. "Sweetheart I will teach you everything about it, how to control it, how to use it, how to suppress it, it's going to be okay, I promise. There's no need to cry."

Eliza lifts her head and looks at her. "But I didn't get my magic from _you_." She said, fearful and desperate. "I got it from _her_. Her type of magic is inside me, don't you understand?"  
Eliza had learned the truth about Zelena earlier this year, and while the woman is still her mother, she is old enough to understand that she was not the product of true love, that what Zelena had done to her father was wrong. And while Zelena is a better person now and Eiza knows this, she also knows that Zelena's magic is strong, powerful, and evil.  
For years Regina's magic had only been light.  Rumple had admitted to her that the reason she was never as good a student as her sister was that dark magic does not come naturally to her. People were instinctively drawn to light magic or dark magic, and Regina is drawn to light magic. It is just part of her chemistry. Zelena, on the other hand, has always been drawn to dark magic.

"Zelena and I shared the same mother. Just because you got your magic from your mother doesn't mean you will be enchanted by dark magic. I won't let that happen."  
Eliza looks down at the table, her eyes never meeting Regina's. "Did you know?" she asks, "Did you already know I had magic?"  
Regina sit down next to her and places an arm around her daughter. "I could feel it inside of you. But magic doesn't always manifest itself. It was there all along, but I didn't know whether you would tap into it. I certainly didn't expect it to come out so early in your life. What happened, how did you notice you had it?"  
Eliza sighs. "I was late to class and I couldn't get my locker open. The lock kept jamming. And I was just thinking I wish I could just get this lock off the door… and then it happened."

"What happened?"

"The lock flew off the locker and flew across the hall. No one was in the halls because I was late. I just, I tried to magic it back together, but I couldn't get it to work. I need to find a way to stop it, control it, so it doesn't happen again. I could have hurt someone."

"But you didn't," Regina pulls her daughter into a hug. "It's not your fault. There are some easy fixes I can teach you to avoid this. Breathing exercises, calming techniques. You have a Mills family temper and Mills family patience, so we'll have to work on that. But you're a powerful, strong girl. You are powerful enough to control the magic inside of you."  
Eliza sniffles against her mother's shoulders for a few minutes, and slowly her breathing became easier, the tears subsiding, until she let out, in a whisper, what she must have been most afraid of.

"I'm scared of what dad will think of me."  
Her daughter has a special bond with her father. The two of them have been practically inseparable from her toddler years on. She is a daddy's girl, and she inherited her distrust of magic from her father. This has to be hard on her.

"Your father is going to be proud of you," Regina assures soothingly.

"Proud of me? For having magic? For having something _she_ gave me?" Even in her state, Eliza still has that fire in her, it appears, and she's drawing upon it now. "Mom, there's nothing to be proud of here. I was born with something, something that could hurt people. I wish I never had it at all! He shouldn't be proud of me!" She makes eye contact with her mother, as if willing to fight over this, willing to prove her mother wrong for this absurd opinion.

Regina can't help but smile as she shakes her head. "He is going to be proud of how you came to me, how you know you have to control this magic. Another child might be excited about the power and forget about the danger. It's a very unique ability. Henry wished for magic, at one time, and I don't doubt Roland had a similar wish. You have it, but you respect it, understand magic for what it is, a powerful gift you must learn to control." She smiled at her daughter, wrapping her arms around her tight. "Your father won't fear you or withdraw from you because you have magic. He purposely surrounds himself with strong, powerful women. You are one of those women. Don't ever forget that."  
She tells her father that night, after dinner, when Henry is off at the movies with Grace, and Roland is upstairs playing video games. It’s just the three of them, Robin and the two most important women in his life.

When Eliza shows him her ability, she swears she will spend every free moment learning about magic, about how to control it and not use it unless it is necessary, promises she will try not to hurt anyone.

Eliza won't meet his eyes the entire time she makes these promises, so she misses the loving expression on Robin's face.  Regina knows Eliza still has so many doubts, that her upbringing and her biology hasn't been easy, that she's still too afraid to see fear and hatred in people like her father, who love her but have been so wronged by the person who shares her blood.

But it doesn't matter that she won't look at him, because he takes matters into his own hands, drawing her into a hug in the middle of her babbling, wiping her tears away, telling her "I'm so proud of you. You are so perfect, you know that?"

She glances at her mother from over her father's shoulder. Regina smiles at her daughter smugly. "See, I told you so."

Regina thinks back to the first time she knew she had magic, how she had shared the same fear that she would also become her mother, the same fear of hurting anyone. If her life were different, had she had the right parents, Regina's relationship with magic would have been so different, so much healthier. She promises herself she will give Eliza this – a knowledge and understanding of the gift inside her, her beautiful daughter who looks nothing like her, but resembles her in so many ways just the same.


End file.
